LOSTING HART

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88T00528R000100020023-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: April 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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is
THE DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
FROM: Herbert E. Meyer
Vice Chairman, NIC
The page
10 April 1984
may be of
project. I forwarded copies accordingly.
Herbert E. Meyer
Att: "Early Warning"
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Confidential ?
4P
,EARLY WARNING
Volume II, No. 3, April 1984
Losing Hart
A distinguished Lebanese philosopher recently expressed
the view that "the central geopolitical fact of our times
is that the Americans don't want to fight-and the world
has noticed." Throughout his campaign for the Demo-
cratic presidential nomination, Senator Gary Hart has
sought to appeal to isolationist sentiment, talking about
world issues purely and simply in terms of whether Amer-
ican lives might be put at risk, and suggesting that he
can't see a cause or a national interest that might be
worth fighting for, not even the defense of vital oil routes
from the Gulf. Walter Mondale accused Hart of trying to
substitute guilt for foreign policy, and the Senator's con-
stant harping on the supposed lessons of Vietnam lent
substance to the charge. Hart claims to speak for a new
generation of American leadership, and there is one sense
in which that is true. He represents-and directs his pri-
mary appeal toward-Americans who think of Vietnam,
rather than World War II, when international conflict is
under discussion. They relate contemporary issues of war
and peace to a traumatic defeat in a divisive frontier con-
flict, not to the successful defense of the Western democ-
racies against totalitarian adversaries. Hart, who was the
manager of George McGovern's 1972 campaign, is the
extreme antithesis of the Democratic stance represented
by the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson: strong on de-
fense, staunch in defense of America's allies, liberal on
social issues.
Hart's vision of the world sometimes seems to be on the
same level of sophistication as a Superman comic. A few
days ago, he entertained a couple of astonished reporters,
including Morton Kondracke of The New Republic, with
a lurid tale of how the late Nicaraguan dictator, Ana-
stasio Somoza, allegedly delighted in feeding opponents
to panthers that he kept in his cellars. There wasn't a
shred of truth to this story, which seems to have ema-
nated from the Sandinista propaganda mills. But it was
rather disquieting to see a man who aspires to the lead-
ership of the Western alliance swallow it without
chewing.
The outside world has been watching. Several very
senior West European officials have privately expressed
their gloom to E W about the effect of a Hart presi-
dency on the NATO alliance and on Western interests
in general. At the same time, the Soviets were clearly en-
couraged by Hart's early campaign successes to believe
that a Democratic candidate was emerging who might
actually beat Reagan. The Soviet media have been flat-
tering toward Hart, while dismissive of Mondale. The
Soviet's current reluctance to negotiate with the Reagan
Administration-or even to receive a note via Brent
Scowcroft-seems to indicate that Konstantin Cher-
nenko's advisers have been doing everything possible to
gamble on the Hart candidacy. The Soviets can help by
flogging the tired theme that Reagan is a "warmonger"
and, therefore, confrontation will continue until the
Americans put someone more "reasonable" in the White
House. They can also seek to create new foreign policy
embarrassments for Washington in the Middle East, and
in Central America, as E W has analyzed in previous
issues.
But they may have miscalculated. This issue of EW
went to press before the vital Democratic contest in New
York, but we are sticking to our prediction that Mondale
will take his party's nomination, and that Reagan will be
reelected next November. If this proves correct, the
Soviets may have missed an opportunity to bargain with
Reagan when he had most reason to make concessions.
The more exposure the initially obscure Senator from
Colorado received, the more brittle his facade appeared.
He fumbled questions about his personal life: why he
changed his name to Hart from Hartpence; why he
couldn't decide whether he was aged 46 or 47, even
though his date of birth-1936-was legible on his birth
certificate; whether it was true (as his former school-
teacher claimed) that he had stolen a copy of his final
high school chemistry exams, and was lucky not to be ex-
pelled before graduation; why he tried to obscure his
deep early involvement in the Church of the Nazarene.
(In his official biography, he described his college as
Bethany College; it is actually Bethany Nazarene. He
also "forgot" his time at Yale Divinity School.)
The movable birthday
The fact that a man claims "not to remember" his year
of birth might seem trivial, if odd and unlikely, but it is
CONTENTS
The Hart campaign ..........................1
Syria's proconsul in Lebanon .................. 4
Soviet special forces .......................... 5
Security Alert: Heirs of the Black Panthers ....... 7
Anti-business campaign in Mexico .............. 8
Bailout and birth of a debtors' cartel ............ 8
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highly relevant in trying to form an assessment of his
character if he is running for the highest office in the
United States. Gary Hart knew his correct date of birth
when he wrote his college applications, his job applica-
tion to the justice Department, and his 1965 application
to the Denver Bar Association. But after 1967, he sud-
denly started making himself younger. He used the false
birth date-1937-on his voter registration form, his
driver's license, his official biography for the Congres-
sional Directory, his sworn "declaration of Acceptance"
filed with the Colorado Secretary of State on June 14,
1980 (after he was renominated for the U.S. Senate). He
gave the wrong birth date to the Naval Reserve when he
used his political influence in the last days of the Carter
Administration to get himself a commission. Even so, he
was over-age; they had to bend the rules to make him a
reserve lieutenant. So far, nobody has found evidence
that Gary Hart gained in any material way by changing
his age. But this strange episode, never adequately ex-
plained-at one point, Hart told reporters he just
couldn't remember his date of birth and it must be
"whatever the records said"I-is part of a pattern of
secrecy and deceptiveness.
What's in a name?
Take Gary Hart's change of name. For a man with
political ambitions, "Hart" is obviously a catchier mon-
icker than the clumsy "Hartpence." It's hard to imagine
that Hitler would have risen far if he'd had to use the
family name, Schickelgruber, and Stalin might not have
become a household word if he'd remained Djugashvili.
But this doesn't account for Gary Hart's ineptness in deal-
ing with the questions that inevitably were asked. He told
reporters that he changed his name because his family
insisted on returning "to the original family name of Hart
in Ireland." This simply wasn't true. His uncle Ralph
immediately countered that it was Gary, not his parents,
who had been pressing for the change. And it turns out
that the original family name was "Pence" in any case.
Again, does it matter? It does if you're concerned about
the steadiness of a possible leader of the Western alliance.
A friend in the press
Hart's wife Oletha ("Lee", nee Ludwig), attractive
and witty, popular with the press corps, has been an
asset in his campaign, and figures with him in many ad-
vertisements. The Harts have been separated and recon-
ciled several times during the marriage. Hart once told
Washington Post reporter Sally Quinn: "I'm a believer
in reform marriage." In 1982, when the Harts were liv-
ing apart, the Senator shared his quarters for a time with
the Post's star investigative reporter, Bob Woodward. At
that time, Woodward was leading a Post taskforce that
was investigating the intelligence community. This was
an interesting conjunction, since Hart had been a mem-
ber of the Senate Intelligence Committee, with access to
a wealth of classified material. Rumors soon began to
circulate in Washington about the possible sources of a
number of "leaks" to the Post, and Hart and Woodward
found other living arrangements.
The "cheap hawks"
On defense issues, Senator Hart aligned himself with
a group of younger congressional liberals who sometimes
refer to themselves, humorously, as "cheap hawks."
Their shared proposition is that, instead of concentrat-
ing on building a relatively small number of high-cost,
technologically superior systems, the United States
should build larger numbers of simpler, cheaper weapons
systems. Their argument has some merits. Some defense
experts are worried about the protracted lead times in-
volved in building major new weapons systems; the gap
between the research and development and the produc-
tion and deployment stages may be eight or ten years.
But there is a logic implied by the Hart approach which
the Senator has not been prepared to follow all the way
through. It would involve a much larger conventional
standing army-and therefore, almost certainly, con-
scription as well as billions in additional manpower costs.
Hart has tried to evade these questions.
Last year, he voted in the Senate to cut $100 billion
from the Pentagon over a five-year period by terminat-
ing or drastically slashing some 30 major military pro-
grams, including: the MX missile, the B-1 bomber, the
Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers, the Bradley in-
fantry fighting vehicle, the C-17 transport plane, new
production of F-15s and F-18s, and the Nimitz-class
nuclear-powered carriers (which Hart wants to replace
by "mini-carriers"). In his voting record on defense, Hart
has been willing to back spending on research and devel-
opment, but regularly opposed production once R&D
was complete. He was notably active in efforts to block
the M-1 battle tank, relying uncritically on critiques pro-
moted by anti-defense lobbies such as Dina Rasor's Mil-
itary Audit Project.
Hart has also been at the forefront of congressional
efforts to block the "high frontier" concept of a space-
based defensive system. He introduced Senate Resolution
28 "opposing the introduction of high technology
weapons into outer space." He has not been taxed on the
evidence that the Soviets have already conducted many
successful tests of anti-satellite weapons capable of
destroying American surveillance and communications
satellites, or that they have been engaged for at least a
decade in testing laser and particle beam systems for po-
tential deployment in space.
In his campaign against the MX missile, Hart has had
support from an unusual quarter. Two former CIA direc-
tors, William Colby and Stansfield Turner, flanked him
at a press conference in May last year at which the Sen-
ator called for a "national mobilization" to stop the MX.
(Colby is now a leading light in the Committee for Na-
tional Security, whose founders were Richard Barnet of
the far-left Institute for Policy Studies and former Carter
Administration arms controller Paul Warnke.)
"Operation guilt"
Hart has been campaigning on Central America-his
policy is the precipitous withdrawal of the U.S. presence
from the entire region-as much as on any other issue,
and his advertising has been rich in unwarranted analo-
gies with Vietnam. His mastery of this and other foreign
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view with the Washington Post two years ago (February
28, 1982). He was asked to define the U.S. security inter-
est in Central America and responded: "I think our in-
terest lies in seeing the entire region is not totalitarian
or totally anti-American." He was then asked if Nica-
ragua's regime was totalitarian. He replied, "No, not so
far as I know"-despite the fact that the Soviets now
officially refer to the Sandinista regime as "socialist," a
term they reserve for orthodox Marxist-Leninist regimes
like those of Eastern Europe, Cuba and Afghanistan. He
was asked about Cuba, and said that "it is not totalitar-
ian and it's not democratic." When asked, "If Cuba is
not a totalitarian government, what is it?" he was re-
duced to admitting, "I don't know." In fact, he could
only come up with one example of a "totalitarian" gov-
ernment in the Western Hemisphere at that time: Para-
guay.
Hart has attempted to revise his statements on this, as
on other foreign policy issues. The net effect has been to
place him squarely in the isolationist camp, to the left of
Mondale on both Central America and the Middle East.
Ayatollah Khomeini, Libya's Colonel Qaddafi and
Syria's President Assad must all have been encouraged
by his statement, during the New Hampshire debate,
that if he were President, "not one American life would
be put ashore in any Persian Gulf area." He has gone
even further than is customary in American politics to
mortgaging the future defense of the United States and its
allies to a series of campaign promises. In canvassing
support for his positions, he makes a naked appeal to
American guilt complexes, about Vietnam, about past
involvement with corrupt or repressive Third World re-
gimes.
His crude attempts to woo Jewish voters in New York
did not enhance his stature as an international states-
man. In his effort to make out that he was more pro-
Israeli than Mondale, he did everything but say that he
would invite the Israelis to run the State Department.
He then fell flat on his face trying to explain just when
he had made up his mind-as he now says he has done-
that the U.S. Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv
to Jerusalem, and had to apologize for a letter put out
by his campaign staff that said something different.
Looking over his past record on foreign policy and
arms control, the Soviets must be heartened by his totem-
istic faith in treaties-whether or not they can be mon-
itored or enforced-and his rejection of "linkage", the
idea that America's willingness to deal with Moscow in
one area should be related to Soviet behavior in other
areas. He went on backing SALT II, for example, despite
the invasion of Afghanistan (which exploded the pros-
pects for ratification by a Democratic-controlled Senate),
and his position didn't change when the United States
lost monitoring stations in Iran considered vital to verify-
ing Soviet compliance with such accords. He still backs
SALT II, and has boasted that he would compile a new
arms control treaty between his election and his inaug-
uration.
Allies from IPS
Despite his publicized friendship with a number of
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famous actors and entertainers, including Robert Red-
ford and Warren Beatty, Gary Hart has long been re-
garded as a "loner". He doesn't start out with the same
kind of intimate circle of political cronies that sur-
rounded past Democratic Presidents-Kennedy's Boston-
ians, Lyndon Johnson's Texans, Jimmy Carter's good of
boys from Georgia. But he has attracted some capable
staffers and advisers, some of them from the McGov-
ernite wing of the Democratic Party and the unilateral
disarmament lobbies, which were actively promoting
Hart before his prospects and his campaign funds started
expanding dramatically. For example, last year, Hart
was persuaded to serve on the Twentieth Anniversary
Committee of IPS, on the eve of the joint conference
staged by IPS and the Soviet Institute of the USA (whose
deputy director, Radomir Bogdanov, is a career KGB
officer) in Minneapolis, which EW covered in detail. The
year before, Hart was persuaded to contribute a long
article to the Arms Control Association, an umbrella
group heavily influenced by IPS, whose officers and
directors include Randall Forsberg (the lady who claims
credit for inventing the nuclear freeze proposal), IPS
trustee Paul Warnke, and Herbert "Pete" Scoville, who
was one of the participants in the first bureau meeting
ever held in Washington by the Soviet-run World Peace
Council.
In other political areas, the Hart stable of IPS-associ-
ated counselors includes Sidney Harman, former IPS
trustee and Undersecretary of Commerce; D.C. Mayor
Marion Barry; Lee Webb; Barry Bluestone; Mark Green
and Harvard professor Lester C. Thurow.
It is worth recalling that in 1976 the early involve-
ment of radicals associated with IPS and its offshoots
with the Carter-Mondale campaign resulted in their
being able to claim policymaking jobs for friends at the
under secretary and deputy under secretary level in the
State, Defense and Commerce Departments, at the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency, in the Action/Vista
social programs-not to mention some important posts
in the National Security Council. The radicals who have
climbed onto the Hart bandwagon are hoping to profit in
an even bigger way if he manages to win.
The co-chairmen of the Hart campaign are Ted Soren-
son, the former Kennedy speechwriter who is no doubt
responsible, in no small measure, for Hart's efforts to
evoke memories of JFK (he even affected the Kennedy
mannerism of sticking his right hand in his pocket while
making a speech) and liberal Representative Pat
Schroeder. His campaign manager is a friend from his
Yale Law School days, Oliver "Pudge" Henkel. Henkel's
deputy is David Landau, 30, a former Capitol Hill lobby-
ist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Hart
has been able to draw on the talents of Pat Caddell, who
plotted Cart pr's 1976 campaign and helped to develop
the theme t:iat a "new generation" of political leader-
ship is required to pilot the country. Others in the can-
didate's kitchen cabinet include Kathy Bushkin, 34, the
campaign press secretary; John Holcum, a former State
Department official who was McGovern's chief aide on
Capitol Hill; and Larry K. Smith, who was Hart's chief
of staff in the Senate and now runs the Center for Science
and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government. I 1
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Syria's Proconsul in Lebanon
Colonel Ghazi Kana'an, the chief of Syrian intelligence
in the Bekaa Valley, is probably the most powerful man
in Lebanon today. While factional leaders were assem-
bling for talks in Lausanne that were dominated by the
Syrian "observer", Vice President Abdul Halim
Khaddam, Colonel Kana'an sent a special report to
President Hafiz al-Assad that focused on relations be-
tween the Shiite Amal organization and the Druze leader-
ship and contained a number of policy recommendations.
It is worth noting that Kana'an is something of an expert
in the repression of communal unrest; he was in charge
of the bloody suppression of the Moslem Brotherhood-
the core of Sunni opposition to the minority Alawite re-
gime in Syria-before his assignment to Lebanon.
From Arab intelligence sources, E W has received a
summary of Kana'an's report, which provides clues to
the course that Syria will steer in Lebanon. Kana'an
devoted considerable space to accounting for the rise of
Nabih Berri, the Shiite Amal leader who was catapaulted
into national prominence since the fighting in the Shuf
mountains last September and is now virtually the master
of West Beirut, since his forces-in concert with the
Druze-trounced the Sunni paramilitary organization,
the Murabitoun. Colonel Kana'an accurately forecast an
emerging alliance between Nabih Berri, the Druze lead-
ers and leftist and Palestinian groups in order to bring
down Amin Gemayel, perhaps by the constitutional de-
vice of shortening his presidential term from six to two
years, so he would be out by September this year.
Kana'an also predicted that the tactical alliance between
Amal and the Druze will break down once they have
achieved their common purpose of destroying Christian
hegemony, since their long-term interests are opposed.
For example (as Kana'an reported) the Lebanese
Shiites oppose the Druze demand for the "cantoniza-
tion" of Lebanon, because it would neutralize the
Shiites' numercial superiority-on which the Amal bases
its hopes of a dominant political role in the future. There
are deep tensions between the two groups in West Beirut,
even though the Druze militia there was placed under
Berri's nominal command.
Kana'an recommended that Syria should avoid public
statements in support of either Shiite or Druze political
ambitions. In private dealings both with Nabih Berri
and with Walid Jumblatt, the leftist Druze warlord, on
the other hand, the Syrians should flatter both with the
idea that Damascus is on their side. At the same time,
Syrian agents in both organizations should work to create
an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, to the point of
provoking armed clashes. The tactic is intended to ensure
that Syria will appear to each faction as the sole power
capable of guaranteeing its interests in Lebanon. It is a
classic tactic of divide and rule, which the Syrians are
also seeking to apply to the Christian community, and it
will be entirely familiar to those who recall the past his-
tory of Syrian involvement in Lebanon and the long-
term objectives the Assad regime is seeking to fulfill.
"Greater Syria"
The leitmotif for Assad in Lebanon, poorly understood
in Washington when a series of State Department en-
voys were shuttling to Damascus in hopes of negotiat-
ing a Syrian pull-out, has been the old vision of a
"Greater Syria," or Bilad al-Sham. Before Assad seized
power in Damascus in 1970, Syria's territorial claims to
Lebanon-reflected in the fact that there is no Syrian
Embassy in Beirut, then or now-were ritualistic. Assad
intervened militarily in Lebanon in 1975-76, and has
been able to use the conflict across his legal borders to
divert attention from internal troubles and to claim legit-
imacy for his unpopular regime, whose leadership is
dominated by Alawites who represent, at most, 12 per-
cent of the Syrian population. Control of the smuggling
rings and hashish production of the Bekaa Valley has
also been highly lucrative for the Syrian officer corps
and those to whom they pay tribute. But the basic point
is that it has long been plain that Hafiz al-Assad views
Lebanon-and Jordan too-as a natural extension of
Syrian territory. It is not in Syria's interest to permit a
single faction to emerge triumphant in Beirut, or, in-
deed, to promote the formation of any stable coalition.
The return of Rifaat
At the same time, however, a succession struggle rages
in Damascus, where Assad recently suffered another
stroke and is said to be incapable of working more than
a few hours a day. His brother, Rifaat, who has man-
aged to retain control of the special forces (although that
is supposed to be incompatible with his new status as a
Vice President) is said to have strengthened his position.
Interestingly, Yasser Arafat had some quite fond things to
say about Rifaat in a recent interview with Al-Watan al-
Arabi, claiming that he was in constant communication
with him up until his forced departure from Tripoli, and
pointing out that Rifaat's special forces did not take part
in the attack on the PLO forces in Tripoli. But Rifaat's
succession is by no means guaranteed. He is opposed not
only by non-Alawite leaders, but from wit in the com-
munity itself. His most powerful rival appears to be the
Defense Minister, Mustafa Talas, who is said to have
Soviet backing. Our intelligence sources say that the KGB
residency in Damascus has sent reports to Moscow warn-
ing about clandestine contacts between Rifaat Assad and
the CIA, as well as envoys from conservative Arab states.
This confirms other information suggesting that the
Soviets do not regard Rifaat as reliable, and may, there-
fore, be actively engaged in covert operations to prevent
his further advancement. There have already been sev-
eral assassination attempts on Rifaat's life.
The Soviet stake
The Soviets, who now have some 9,000 military ad-
visers and personnel in Syria, have an enormous stake in
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the outcome of the power struggle in Damascus. Syria
is not a Soviet client-state, but is now the primary
stalking-horse for Moscow in the region as a whole. The
Syrian ports of Latakia and Tartus have become im-
portant basing areas for the Soviet navy, and the
Russians are helping to construct a new railroad to link
the two harbors. Syrian bases, both naval and military,
enable the Soviets to pose a new threat both to Cyprus
and Turkey. The Soviet SAM-5 surface-to-air missiles
supplied to Syria are within range of vital NATO facil-
ities in Turkey. For example, the northernmost SAM-5
base, near the Syrian village of Mesken, is within strik-
ing distance of the squadron of U.S. F-4 Phantoms
stationed at Incirlik in eastern Turkey. These SAM-5 sys-
tems are wholly operated by Russians; Syrian officers
are only allowed inside the bases on occasional cosmetic
visits. Huge recent Soviet arms deliveries may be de-
signed to establish forward arms depots for Moscow's
forces as well as to strengthen the Syrians.
Moscow's Special Forces
There is now a fair body of evidence-in the form of
reliable sightings of frogmen and the tracks of mini-
submarines-to suggest that the Soviets have been using
Sweden coastal waters (including the approaches to its
most sensitive naval installations) for dress rehearsals by
their naval "diversionary brigades." These are the
maritime counterpart of the Soviet Union's Spetsnaz
forces, Moscow's equivalent of Britain's Special Air Ser-
vice or America's Green Berets. Some first-hand insights
into the structure and operations of Soviet special forces
have recently been offered by a former Soviet army of-
ficer who uses the pen-name Viktor Suvorov. We are able
to provide additional details.
Spetsnaz is the acronym for a Russian phrase meaning
"Special Detachments." The total strength of the
Spetsnaz forces, organized as independent companies
and brigades attached to the headquarters of Military
Districts, army groups in satellite countries and
Afghanistan, and the four Soviet fleets, is about 30,000.
They constitute an elite arm of the Soviet armed forces.
The men are predominantly Russians, Byelorussians and
Ukrainians (Jews and Central Asians, with the exception
of a few Tatars, are excluded) and they are chosen for
superior intelligence and physical strength. They are also
screened carefully for political loyalty; all Spetsnaz of-
ficers are required to be members of the Communist Party.
In time of war, the role of Spetsnaz is to go behind
enemy lines, destroy command centers, communications
and strategic bases, and to liquidate key political and
military leaders. To prepare for that role, Spetsnaz
recruits receive extensive training in foreign languages
and covers, and in methods of infiltration. They would
be able to count on networks of "sleeper agents", in-
cluding members of Soviet-controlled terrorist cells in the
West, in order to carry out their functions.
Their prowess has been demonstrated in two situations
in recent years: in Prague in 1968, where Spetsnaz
troopers were used to capture airfields and arrest
political leaders in advance of the Soviet invasion, and in
Afghanistan since 1979. Spetsnaz troops took part in the
assault on the Darulaman palace, spearheaded by a KGB
hit-team directed by Colonel Bayerenov (who was killed
by his own men in the confusion) in which President
Hafizollah Amin was murdered. More recently, they
have been involved in cross-border strikes against Mu-
jahideen sanctuaries inside Iran, and in counter-
insurgency operations in rebel-held territory. Their
fighting record has been notably superior to that of the
remainder of the Soviet expeditionary forces-officially
described by Moscow as the "Limited Contingent."
Mini-subs
The incursions into Swedish waters since 1981, a recent
embarrassment to the left-wing government of Olof
Palme, indicate the role Spetsnaz units might play in the
event of military hostilities between the Warsaw Pact
and NATO, as well as their commanders' attention to
realism in training exercises.
Each Soviet fleet has a Spetsnaz brigade which in-
cludes a battalion of paratroops, two or three frogmen
battalions, and a squadron of mini-submarines; each
mini-sub has a crew of between five and seven men.
Their major task, in wartime, is to infiltrate enemy ter-
ritory and knock out nuclear bases-including nuclear
submarines, before they could put to sea-and other
strategic targets. Their rehearsals include maritime in-
filtration of the United States, and they are believed to
have conducted exercises in the Caribbean and along the
coastline of Cuba.
According to recent military defectors, the Soviet navy
has been keenly interested in developing mini-subs for in-
shore operations against NATO ports and naval bases
since World War II. The midget submarine that is most
widely used at present weighs about 100 tons, and essen-
tial parts are manufactured at the Krasnoye Sormovo
plant in Gorky. Recently the Soviets have started produc-
ing an improved model, which may be nuclear-powered.
The standard mini-sub can carry two torpedoes or anti-
ship missiles, or six mines, or several frogmen in addition
to the crew. The original design was stolen from the
Italians. Today the Soviet military intelligence service,
the GRU, has standing orders to seek to obtain any new
technology relating to the miniaturization of underwater
craft. This ranks high on the list of priorities in its annual
requirements book. The mini-subs that had been in-
truding deep inside Swedish waters are from the Diver-
sionary Brigade of the Baltic Fleet, whose targets are
West Germany and Scandinavia.
Since the range of mini-subs is not great, they are
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dependent on mother ships. Enter the Soviet merchant
marine and the Soviet fishing fleet. Naval experts tell EW
that the Soviets' whale factory ships are ideal for
transporting mini-subs, and that some have been special-
ly adapted for this purpose. It may be worth noting that
the "Dnieper" class merchant ships the Soviets have been
delivering to Cuba might have a similar dual role in the
event of need. The Cubans recently took delivery of a
sixth ship in this class, the Antonio Guitera, which had a
dead-weight of 15,000 tons and a cruising speed of 15
knots.
Organization
Spetsnaz forces are organized into 16-17 brigades,
more than 40 independent companies, several
autonomous regiments (one of which uses the army's
Central Sporting Club in Moscow for cover) and the
separate naval units. A typical Spetsnaz company in-
cludes 110-120 men, organized into a headquarters unit,
three paratroop platoons, a communications platoon
(versed in rapid-burst transmissions) and support units. It
has nine or ten officers, plus 10 or 11 praporshchiki (com-
missioned quartermasters) and is usually divided into
12-15 sabotage teams. Typically, Spetsnaz units are com-
manded by officers of higher rank than in other branches
of the Soviet army; a company commander is more likely
to be a major than a captain. Control is decen-
tralized-there is no command center for Spetsnaz as a
whole. This is partly for security reasons.
Covers
Inside the USSR, Spetsnaz troops are frequently
dressed in Airborne uniforms (minus the Guards badges
the six Airborne divisions won in World War II). In
Eastern Europe, they sometimes act under cover as
signals troops. "Headquarters companies," which
specialize in the assassination of enemy leaders, are often
disguised as athletic teams, both at regional level and in
Moscow. (It is not generally realized that a very high pro-
portion of the Soviet Olympics team is drawn from
Spetsnaz-officially, the Central Army Sporting Club, a
Spetsnaz cover-and the KGB's "Dynamo" Sports Club.)
Senior Lieutenant Valentin Irykalin, a naval Spetsnaz of-
ficer from the Black Sea Fleet, won a silver medal for
rowing at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. Later, he
was arrested by the Turkish police in Istanbul while on
an espionage assignment for the GRU. It is likely that a
dozen or more of the Soviet athletes who will come to Los
Angeles for this year's Olympics will be Spetsnaz officers.
Combat training
Spetsnaz recruits receive intensive training in
parachute, sabotage and hand-to-hand combat tech-
niques. They are required to make at least 20-25
parachute jumps over a two-year period. In training ex-
ercises, great stress is laid on realism in simulated attacks
on NATO bases and command centers. Inflatable dum-
mies of NATO missiles and aircraft are used. Major an-
nual exercises are held around Kirovograd, close to
uranium mines worked by forced labor. Interrogation
methods (and resistance to interrogation) are a major ele-
ment in Spetsnaz training. So are foreign languages.
Special weapons
Like all special forces, Spetsnaz units are lightly
armed. Their basic sidearms are the standard
Kalashnikov_ assault rifle; the Malish mini-machinegun
(identical to the Czech-made Skorpion); and the P-6
pistol, an assassin's weapon with a built-in silencer. For
attacks on strategic bases and similar facilities, Spetsnaz
units are also equipped with powerful directional mines
(the Mon-100 and Mon-200; a superior version has
recently been developed); Mukha grenade-launchers;
and SAM-7 Strela missiles.
Sleeper agents
Agents run by the Soviet military intelligence service,
the GRU, are divided into two basic categories:
"strategic" and "operational." The so-called "strategic"
agents are handled by GRU residencies abroad under the
supervision of the geographical departments at head-
quarters. "Operational" agents are run by the in-
telligence directorate in each military command. They
are "cross-border" agents, run from a Soviet head-
quarters in a neighboring area (for example, agents in
Turkey may be run from Odessa or the Trans-Caucasian
Military District) who are required to supply intelligence
of immediate relevance to military operations, such as
the location of a radar station or the exact strength of a
garrison on a given day. They include agents specifically
assigned to Spetsnaz work, who come under the supervi-
sion of the Third Department of the Intelligence Direc-
torate (RU) in each command. Spetsnaz agents in West
Germany are directed by Third Department officers at-
tached to the Soviet army headquarters in
Czechoslovakia and Poland, since they are the ones
responsible for cross-border operations against the
Federal Republic.
The Spetsnaz agents are, for the most part,
"sleepers"-in other words, fully recruited agents of non-
Soviet origin whose task is to gain access to targets in
readiness for a future role in sabotage and destruction.
They are expected to provide local knowledge, support
and sanctuary for Spetsnaz teams, and are also used to
maintain forward caches of weapons and equipment in-
side target countries. Many are themselves trained
saboteurs, whose entire career may be devoted to main-
taining themselves in readiness for an order to attack one
or more strategic targets (an order that, of course, may
never come). They will be directed to seek accommoda-
tion close to critical targets, and to try to obtain jobs con-
nected with strategic installations.
The vast training program that the GRU has been run-
ning for international terorrists, both directly and via
subcontractors like the Cubans, has undoubtedly pro-
duced many recruits for these sleeper networks. It may be
worth noting that former members of the Venceremos
Brigades-which took more than 4,000 young Americans
to Cuba-have turned up in California and the
southwest United States as employees of major utilities
and, in one case at least, of a police department.
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a ?
SECURITY ALERT
Heirs of the Black Panthers
Among the militant groups that are planning to join in
demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention
in San Francisco in July is the African People's Socialist
Party (APSP), based in Oakland. Leaders of the group
acknowledge direct contacts with revolutionary groups
abroad including the Irish Republican Socialist Party
(IRSP) of Northern Ireland and the Pan-Africanist Con-
gress (PAC) of South Africa. They support George
Habash's terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the guerrilla
Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in
El Salvador.
The APSP was founded in St. Petersburg, Florida in
1972, and traces its ideological heritage to Kwame
Nkrumah, Malcolm X and the racial separatism and pan-
Africanism of Marcus Garvey, whose portrait adorns the
party's green, red and black banner. Its initial recruits
came from the "black power" movements of the 1960s,
notably the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Commit-
tee and the Black Panther Party. Its 14-point program,
revised and endorsed at a 1981 congress, states that "the
present condition of existence for African people within
current U.S. borders is colonialism, a condition of ex-
istence where a whole people is oppressively dominated
by a foreign and alien state power for the purpose of
economic exploitation and political advantage." The pro-
gram asserts the party's "right and obligation to build an
African People's Liberation Army... to win our actual
freedom from our oppressive colonial slave masters." It
demands the removal of the police-described as "a col-
onial army"-from black neighborhoods, "to be replaced
by our liberation forces." Tax resistance is another form
of struggle: "African people must refuse to pay taxes to a
government which uses such taxes to prop up and support
brutal dictators."
Chairman Omali
The party's founder and leader is Joseph Waller, who
now calls himself Omali Yeshitala or "Chairman Omali."
A former employee of the St. Petersburg Times, he was
fired in 1966 for taking time off to join the civil rights
protests in Mississippi. He was a founder of the junta of
Militant Organizations, active in Florida and Kentucky.
He was arrested several times in skirmishes with the
police, and spent two years in Florida jails. (He was
subsequently arrested in San Francisco in 1978 on
charges of passing counterfeit money.)
The APSP started organizing in Oakland in the
vacuum caused by the break-up of the Black Panther Par-
ty, with sufficient success that two years later, the party
newspaper, Burning Spear, was moved to Oakland from
St. Petersburg. The group has followed the Black Pan-
thers' lead with black community projects and tenant
organizing, and is planning to open an African People's
Health Clinic later this year to replace the defunct BPP
George Jackson Health Clinic.
Feminist fronde
Two prominent women members of the party-Chair-
man Omali's second wife, Linda Leaks, and Ajowa
Ifateyo, who formerly ran its bookstore in Louisville-
recently led a feminist attack on Omali that resulted in a
split in the organization. They complained that he was
living off APSP members who were made to take conven-
tional jobs to support him as a "professional revolu-
tionary"-and they played up his two court appearances
on charges of failing to keep up child support payments to
his first wife. Chairman Omali countered that these
"slanders" were the product of "FBI covert operations"
and that the women's "participation in the Workers'
World-influenced Dykes Against Racism Everywhere"
had "placed them in bed with the white ruling class."
White auxiliaries
Despite Omali's ideology of black separatism, he has
recognized the usefulness of white support fronts. When
the APSP was active in organizing prisoners' protests in
the mid-1970s, it developed contacts with a number of
predominantly white organizations such as the Prairie
Fire Organizing Committee, a front for the Weather
Underground, and "solidarity" groups supporting Latin
American revolutionaries. A central element in the
ideology of the Weather Underground and its offshoots
was that white revolutionaries must negate their "skin
privilege" by conscientiously taking their cues from black
and Third World radical leaders. A number of former
Weather Underground sympathizers who were attracted
by Joe Waller's flamboyant style banded together in a
new support group for the APSP-an auxiliary that now
calls itself the Committee in Solidarity with African In-
dependence (CSAI). In New York, the CSAI holds fre-
quent public meetings at the Washington Square
Methodist Church on West 4th Street.
Foreign contacts
The APSP is promoting the formation of an African
Socialist International, composed of Caribbean revolu-
tionaries, radical African exiles based in Europe, and the
party itself. The idea was touted at a meeting in Paris last
year that was hosted by Samba Mbuub, a radical exile
from Senegal. Last month Chairman Owali and his In-
ternational Director Neil Holmes set off on another Euro-
pean tour. Their itinerary included Belfast, where they
planned meetings with the Irish Republican Socialist Par-
ty, and London and Paris, where they intended to confer
with leaders of a number of militant African and Carib-
bean organizations.
At the end of this month, Omali and Rick Ayers, the
New York-based chairman of the CSAI support group,
are planning to start a national tour in the United States
to strengthen ties with militant American Indian groups
-especially the Dine Nation and the Big Mountain
Defense Committee in Arizona-and recruit white ac-
tivists to take part in the APSP's "Oakland Summer."
Despite the internal feuding and the surreal quality of
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many of its pronouncements, the APSP appears to be
well-funded and expanding toward fulfillment of its
primary objective: to assume the former role of the Black
Panther Party. It is running a number of businesses out of
its Oakland headquarters, "Uhuru House," including a
vitamin pill company and typesetting and graphics com-
panies that recently acquired an AB Dick 3609 printing
press and a Compugraphic 7500 typesetting machine.
Corporate Targets
Mexico's "Silicon Valley"
Since President Miguel de la Madrid's government
changed the rules last year to permit certain foreign com-
panies to own 100 percent of their business in Mexico,
there has been renewed interest by foreign in-
vestors-and an intensifying opposition campaign by the
Mexican left. Since the new policy was adopted, the Con-
sejo National del Comercio Exterior (Conacex) and Mex-
ican government agencies have been encouraging U.S.,
Japanese, South Korean and Hong Kong corporations to
expand their activities. A special drive has been made to
attract electronics plants to the north of the country.
Some government aides talk about creating a Mexican
"silicon valley" around the city of Chihauhua, Pancho
Villa's old stamping-ground.
The Mexican left, both within the Confederation de
Trabajadores, which is controlled by the ruling Institu-
tional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and as represented by
the Partido Socialista Unificado Mexicano (PSUM), a
coalition of Communists and smaller Marxist splinter
groups, is violently opposed to the new government
policy on the grounds that it entails "the loss of economic
sovereignty." The PSUM was the moving force in a wave
of industrial unrest in Monterrey and Nuevo Leon last
year. On the other side of the border, U.S. labor
organizers are worried about what they regard as the ex-
port of jobs to low-income workers south of the Rio
Grande. There is sufficient community of interest for
coordinated action against U.S. companies moving plants
into Mexico.
Plans for joint industrial action against U.S.
automakers, electrical and electronics companies were
discussed at a recent "Conference on the Social and
Economic Problems of the Border." It was attended by
delegates from the PSUM, "independent" Mexican unions
like the Mexican Union of Communications Workers and
the Union of Auto Workers and "rank-and-file" factory
organizations. Among the U.S. participants were
members of Local 645 of the United Auto Workers
(UAW) from Van Nuys, California, and Humberto
Camacho, the "International Representative" of the
United Electrical Workers, from Los Angeles. Camacho
is now taking the lead in efforts to work out plans for
joint labor organizing, strikes and boycotts against "U.S.
monopolies" by groups on both sides of the border.
The Bailout and Birth
of a Debtors' Cartel
The eleventh hour resolution of Argentina's latest debt
crisis enabled the heads of American money center banks
to sleep more easily. It came just as the deadline expired
on March 31-the one which would have obliged U.S.
banks to prescribe bad loans (non-performing for 90 days
or more) as just that, and to deduct interest that wasn't
collected on those from their first quarter earnings
statements. This would have reduced Manufacturers
Hanover's earnings per share, for example, for the first
quarter 1984 by about 25 percent.
The $500 million bailout for Argentina involved
cooperation between four Latin American countries
(Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil) who will put
up $300 million between them, and the United States,
which will pay back their loans when and if President
Raul Alfonsin agrees to an IMF dictated austerity pro-
gram. This arrangement was hailed by Treasury
Secretary Donald Regan and others as a breakthrough in
Hemispheric cooperation, through which the big-debtor
countries of Latin America will gently nudge one another
into accepting IMF proposals that would otherwise be
politically indigestible. Regan even suggested that the
deal had put "paid" to alarmist talk about countries be-
ing declared in default and about the rise of a "debtors'
cartel."
Unfortunately, that isn't obvious just yet. One malign
effect of the Argentine bailout is that it could encourage
other big debtors to wait until the last minute to settle
their accounts, provoking a new series of heartstopping
crises and new efforts to capitalize on Western panic,
particularly in the boardrooms of the big U.S. banks.
Closer cooperation among the major Latin American
debtor countries may have been helpful on this occasion.
But the precedent could lead to a tougher united front
toward Western creditors and the IMF in the future,
especially when seen against the backdrop of high in-
terest rates in the United States and the radical political
changes that are shaping elsewhere in the hemisphere.
It was significant that the 11 Western banks con-
tributed $100 million to the bailout, but were persuaded
to lend at only one-eighth of one percent over libor, an
unusually low rate for risky loans in Latin America. The
new grouping of Latin American debtor nations can be
expected to exert joint downward pressure on lending
rates-and they have learned that the fear of a Wall
Street rout is a powerful weapon in their hands. Stocks of
the major U.S. banks steadied after the Argentine deal
was announced, but we predict more shocks ahead.
? Published by Mid-Atlantic Research Associates, Inc.
P.O. Box 1523, Washington, D.C. 20013 [1-800-638-2086: Maryland and outside continental U.S.-301-366-2531]
Editor: Robert Moss. Chief Foreign Editor: Arnaud de Borchgrave. National Affairs Editor: john Rees. Copvriaht ? 1984.
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